WHO calls for graphic warnings on tobacco products

WHO calls for graphic warnings on tobacco productsManila - The World Health Organization (WHO) on Thursday called on governments to use graphic pictures on tobacco products to show the frightening impact of smoking on people's health.

In a statement ahead of World No Tobacco Day, the WHO said the tobacco industry spends vast sums of money to produce packaging that makes a deadly product look safe and appealing.

To counter that effect, packets should show shocking photos of lung tumours, blood clots in the brain and decaying gums, the global health body said.

"Experience from around the world shows that pictorial warnings motivate users to quit and discourage people from starting," said Shint Young-Soo, the WHO's regional director for the Western Pacific.

"Countries have obligations to use health warnings on tobacco products," he added. "It is an easy and cost-effective way to inform people about the truth and to reduce tobacco consumption."

According to the WHO, tobacco is the world's leading preventable cause of death and the only product that kills when used exactly as the manufacturer intends.

Worldwide, more than 5 million people die from tobacco each year - more than from HIV/AIDS, malaria and tuberculosis combined.

In the Western Pacific region, tobacco use is responsible for two deaths every minute.

The WHO warned that unless urgent action was taken, there would be more than 8 million deaths each year from tobacco-related diseases globally by 2030.

More than 80 per cent of those deaths would be in developing countries.

To mark World No Tobacco Day on May 31, the WHO said it was giving awards to health agencies and officers in five countries for their outstanding work on pictorial health warnings.

The awardees are led by Mongolia's Working Team on Public Health Warnings on Tobacco Products for its contribution in developing and adopting pictorial health warnings.

The team, composed of several government ministries, agencies and non-governmental organizations, developed health pictorial warnings that should start appearing on tobacco packing in January 2010.

The other winners are Dr Ramlee Bin Rahmat, director of the public health department of Malaysia's Ministry of Health, Australia's Department of Health and Ageing, Cambodia's National Center for Health Promotion and Singapore's National Smoking Control Programme.(dpa)